Ghosts in the universe

Hands-on at the exhibit

• Try our augmented reality app to see these ghost particles all around us
• See how we create a neutrino beam
• Use an oculus rift headset to see how neutrinos are detected

Find out more

Do neutrinos hold the key to the antimatter-matter conundrum?

One of the big unsolved mysteries in physics is what happened to all the antimatter after the Big Bang. The answer may lie in neutrinos, and at this exhibit you’ll discover why this invisible particle is so very important.

Antimatter is made of particles which have charges opposite of normal matter. At the origin of the universe, matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts. So why is almost everything now only made of matter? A tantalizing body of evidence is building to suggest that the invisible elementary particle, the neutrino, may play a key role in tipping the antimatter-matter balance. The teams at Durham University, Queen Mary University of London and the Hyper-Kamiokande UK collaboration are involved in the race to understand these ghostly particles, trillions of which pass unnoticed through our bodies every second. The team aim to understand the differences between neutrinos and antineutrinos, by creating beams of the particles and using giant detectors to study how they change after travelling kilometres from their source. 

Find out more about neutrinos and the origin and future of the Universe, or visit the Ghosts in the universe website.

Presented by: Durham University, the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology, Queen Mary University of London, the University of Edinburgh, Imperial College London, Lancaster University, the University of Liverpool, the University of Oxford, Royal Holloway University of London, the University of Sheffield, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, the University of Warwick.